October 29, 2026 | Be Connected
Jesus Laid Down His Life
Scripture: 1 John 3:16-20(NIV)
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. 19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
Devotional
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” This is reminiscent of one penned by Paul in Romans 5:6-8.
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
The heart of both passages is that love is what motivated Jesus to give His life for us. John suggests that same kind of love should motivate us to love those around us with our possessions, actions and truth.
I am married to someone who loves others like this. Over the four decades plus of marriage and ministry together, I have witnessed Lisa pouring out her time, energy, and money into the lives of those in need. Once when I came home from work, she had already invited a stranger passing through town to come live with us until he sorted things out. We gave him the basement of our parsonage, while I slept with one eye open upstairs where my wife and four daughters were tucked away. I couldn’t figure out if I was proud of Lisa or upset with her.
That’s how Christ-like love is. It disrupts our daily lives where most of our thoughts, words and actions are centered around our own agenda. Godly love is not a slogan or a platitude or a well-meaning Christian concept. It costs something. It risks something. Just ask Jesus.
The brother of Jesus put it like this in James 2:14-17.
“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
